Chocolate Yule Log, a great British tradition (like the French Bouche de Noel), and mince pies (mincemeat tarts), a British Christmas essential, are now appearing at the Full English Cafe. If you order a High Tea, both will feature (if you are one of those people who doesn’t like anything fruity, let us know and we will switch the mince pie for something else).

The confusing name of mincemeat comes from its fifteenth century origins, when it was common in England to mix meat with fruit in pie fillings. Today, most recipes for mincemeat still include beef suet, although ours does not. Beef suet is not really essential for making mincemeat, but if you know a good source of beef suet in the United States, do let us know as it is very good for making steamed puddings!

Merry Holidays!

This is our new flyer for the cafe. Isn’t it beautiful? The photo is an original, by Mabel Bachini, taken in London this October, and we used it for the combination of iconic old Britishness with the modern slant of the graffiti and the car speeding past; a blend of old and new that we aspire to in our business! Click on the image to see it larger. We’re thinking it would make a great poster, perhaps with different words- watch this space!

And come by, pick one up and use it to decorate your fridge. The colour ones won’t last forever…

No, it’s not one of those obscure British curse words (although it is a slang term for referring to an attractive young lady). The crumpet is a scrumptious treat along the lines of hot buttered toast made on a fork over an open coal fire, a sort of cross between an American pancake (it cooks through the holes), a Yorkshire pudding (puffy milk-and-egg batter) and an English muffin (made with yeast). But better than all three. If you don’t believe us, just take another look at the picture above and change your mind.

To eat a crumpet, you need butter and possibly some other topping of your choice, such as jam, honey or (our favourite) lemon curd (we make our own in the Full English Cafe).

Here are some photos of crumpets:

When your batter has spent an hour rising into a thick bubbly gloop, you can dollop it into buttered crumpet rings in a heavy cast iron pan. The bubbles help cook the crumpet, but it takes a while and there will be a few batches to make. Listen to BBC Radio 4 while cooking.

Here are the crumpets fully made. Did you know that there are crumpets in the Harry Potter books, but the American edition translates them into English muffins instead? Hadn’t they heard of footnotes?

Hot buttered crumpet, out of the toaster. You could eat them from the pan, but once cooled the thing to do is toast them on both sides before putting butter on the top.

You can get a closer look here at the way the butter melts on top of the crumpet. This is a very important process.

Cut your crumpet in half before eating, so as to trick yourself into eating it more slowly.

Here is a cross-section of the magical holes inside the crumpet, which allow the butter to melt down on the inside, allowing you to eat more butter.

And here are the directions and map to the Full English Cafe, so you can pop in and buy some very soon. Happy weekend!

If you came to Full English looking for the best bacon in Austin, you may not know that we also make the most real, “home-made”, delicious and old-fashioned High Tea in Austin in our opinion! For just $15, we will give you a plate stand stacked with ham, cheese and cucumber tea sandwiches; scones with jam and cream; five different cakes and sweets; and a pot of tea of your choice from our hand-picked tea menu.

We can serve you High Tea when you drop in, but if you book ahead you won’t have to wait as long, especially if there are more than two in your group (call the cafe on 512-240-1748 or email alice@fullenglishfood.com). High Tea is a great celebration treat for all ages, and makes a lovely tea party. We will be dreaming up some special festive treats for our High Tea for the Holidays in the next couple of weeks. Watch this space…

We did it! We made British-style back bacon, in our very own kitchen. And American-style bacon too (streaky bacon in the UK). It’s locally-made, proper and delicious, and best of all, the meat is pork loin from locally pastured pork by Richardson Farms- happy pigs with no antibiotics or hormones. Can you taste those goodnesses? We say yes! your tastebuds are one of your most sensitive organs, unless numbed by horrible addictive rubbish. And maybe scientists will catch up one day and prove our theory…

Meanwhile, test the theory for yourself by popping into the Full English Cafe and ordering a totally local breakfast. Mushrooms from Kitchen Pride Mushroom Farms just this morning, so now you can eat the best, local-est, most delicious British breakfast in town all day tomorrow till everything is gone. Open at 10am- don’t forget to put the clocks back tonight!

It’s always a surprise when you win a competition you did not even enter, and we are honoured and humbled to be given this Best of Austin 2011 “Best Bacon” recognition for serving British-style back bacon on our breakfast menu. We have had endless trouble sourcing our bacon affordably and consistently, as our regular followers know, but this award will encourage us to remortgage our souls if necessary to make sure we never run out again. Having said that, we will continue keep you informed on our facebook page and twitter about how the bacon supply is going. BUT we have plenty of bacon right now, so no worries!

You can find some truly amazing local bacon in Austin, but it usually has to be bought then cooked at home: Salt and Time and Kocurek Family Charcuterie both do delicious bacon that we love, but it is not available for resale in other establishments. The laws are very strict and the licences are very expensive, so sadly we are not able to serve you these delicious alternative bacons in our cafe at this point in legal history.

We are also experimenting at the moment with home-made bacon… it’s not exactly the right cut for back bacon (which is very difficult to get as pork is butchered completely differently here than in the UK, and the cuts have different markets) but it is close, and the first batch should be ready in the next few days if it turns out well. Watch this space…

The Full English Cafe is now a year old. We will be postponing celebrations for a while, till we get a few changes done- the garden, improved menus and some decoration bits & pieces- which will take several weeks. Then we’re going to have a party, and invite all of our friends. (See the bottom of this post if you want to get connected.)

But one year ago, we were opening the cafe, and by then it was already the one year anniversary of the most insane and ludicrous thing we have ever done in our lives (and we’ve done a few insane and ludicrous things, to be sure): signing the lease on 2000 Southern Oaks, an ex-tattoo parlour with a floor like the surface of the moon, no kitchen, a “toilet” from a Thai prison circa 1974, and a roof that might as well have been a colander. Hidden away on a side street behind a convenience store, in the heart of deep South Austin 78745.

Yes! We thought. This would be the perfect place to open our idea of the perfect British cafe! The sort of place you just might still find in a small British seaside town if you are very lucky, where they will fry your eggs and bacon with some bread, and there are home-made cakes and strong black tea in mugs, and you can sniff the salt air and listen to the sound of seagulls as you dream away the morning reading the Warmington-on-Sea Times and writing postcards. Except, it probably closed in 1982, and still had the original 1966 wallpaper at that time. And there aren’t a lot of seagulls in South Austin, and 2000 Southern Oaks was more WWII air-raid shelter than Brighton Beach.

And also, we didn’t have any money.

Still, not being the sort of people to let minor details prevent us from having a go at a dream (and Having a Go being one of the greatest and most ludicrous of traditional British values- see Scott of the Antarctic), we decided to go ahead and follow that dream. Well, you’ve got to follow a dream, and our only other dream at the time was opening the same kind of establishment in Berlin, which was definitely a little more out of reach. (Still a dream, still a way out of reach, may always be; whatever.)

And ever since that fateful day two years ago, we have been flying by the seat of our pants, except that both “seat” and “pants” take on a whole new meaning in this context. We have made some mistakes, we have done some good things, and we have tried to change some of the rules of how this kind of project can be done, with variable results. But in the end, our advice for other people with no money who want to renovate and open a food establishment is definitely DON’T DO IT! And if you do, don’t complain to us when it nearly kills you. On the other hand, if you want a sympathetic ear, we’re your folks

So why did we do this, other than because we are insane, ludicrous and ridiculous people with a tendency to do crazy things?

Basically, we believed in it. And we still believe in it. And the thing is, even when the mail has been full of bank threats and our staff have had to leave so they can get a real job and we spent all night lying awake worrying and we couldn’t find back bacon/ sausage casings/ our own front door keys, and it was Tuesday afternoon and the cafe was empty, we continued believing in it.

And why do we still believe in this?

That’s easy: because of you. By “you” we don’t mean angry people who are insulted by teabags (just ask for leaf tea instead!) or who want white tablecloths and silver teapots (no thanks) or who can’t ask for a replacement or a refund if something is wrong with their food or drink (we would be happy! just let us know!). We mean the people who Get Us, who understand what we’re trying to do.

We’re not here to rip you off. We don’t pay ourselves at all. If we wanted to get rich, we would never have done this. We’re here because we wanted to make a contribution. It may not be great cut-throat business practice, but we wanted to share what we thought we could offer, our favourite British treats in a laid-back environment, to our neighbourhood and to Austin. And the people who appreciate that are you, our customers, the people who come back and tell us how much you want us to keep doing what we do; old-fashioned baking, tasty comfort food, good ingredients, local produce, affordable prices, an easygoing atmosphere where you can pick up a guitar or play scrabble, and stay for hours if you feel like it.

We believed in this venture when it was only an idea, but we now believe in it because you believe in us. And we plan to honour that by doing everything we possibly can to make it work and keep it growing. There’s a whole lot more we intend to do at Full English, and we’ll be posting all about it and sharing every step. Including if we step right into a cow-pat. That’s just the way we like to do things! (not the cow pat, sharing the experience…)

So in the meantime, THANK YOU. You know who you are

Alice & Shad X

If you like Full English, you’re already our friend and we want to connect with you and invite you to our parties! Please “like” our facebook page, where you will get real-time news and be able to join all our conversations. Also do subscribe to our newsletter so we can send you emails with advance news of events and future offers. You can also follow us on twitter @fullenglishfood, if twitter is your thing.

Wednesday 9am – 5pm
Thursday 9am – 5pm
Friday 8am – 9pm
Saturday 8am – 9pm
Sunday 10am – 5pm
Monday closed
Tuesday closed

To stay in touch with all our news, “like” our facebook page- the easiest way to talk with us online.

It has come to our attention that some of you have had some less than stellar experiences at our South Austin cafe. This just won’t do. We wanted you to know we are listening.

We are taking action to address the recent issues with our bacon supply and are working to implement many of your suggestions such as tea offerings, breakfast options and more. There are some improvements that we, like you, have wanted to see at Full English and we are now able to bring these improvements to the cafe.

In the next few weeks, we will be announcing a relaunch of the cafe, with some menu changes, featured events, and a new website. We will be scheduling an event to coincide with the new Full English and will let everyone know more details here on the site and on our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/fullenglishfood). Don’t worry, all the things you love about the cafe will still be here (we love the Millionaire’s Shortbread as much as you all do!)

We encourage you to visit us over the next few weeks and let us know what you’d like to see. Try something you haven’t had before and let us know what you think. If you would like to email me, I can be reached at alice@fullenglishfood.com.

Thank you for your support of Full English. We are proud to be part of our South Austin neighborhood and loo forward to being here in the future.

Thank You
Alice Bachini
Owner
Full English

The brand new season of the famous, spectacular and extraordinary British sci-fi show starts this Saturday night at 8pm, and we’ll be projecting it on our wall for all to see. Come along and share the experience with members of the Doctor Who fan club of Austin, while enjoying delicious snacks, supper, cakes and a drink. You can BYOB for alcohol* – arrive early to get a good seat as we will be improvising furniture arranging and are not sure how many people might show up!

And check out the trailer above- it’s exciting!

* We’re introducing a $2 charge per person for corkage per bottle of wine and $1.50 for a chilled beer glass, to cover our service costs, cleaning, glasses etc.